Skookum Tugs: British Columbia's Working Tugboats

Gordon Turner is the author of Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific’s
Greatest Ship and the editor of SeaFare, a quarterly newsletter on sea
travel.

Tugboats play a major role in the economy of British Columbia. Working
on the Inside Passage, the stormy west coast of Vancouver Island, the
lower Fraser River, and countless inlets, they go about their duties
with little fanfare, carrying out such tasks as towing log booms,
hauling barges, and pushing freighters alongside docks.

Skookum Tugs is not only about the hard-working vessels themselves; it
is also about the crews that operate them. Much of their skill comes
from experience and good judgment, rather than formal instruction. The
text gives lucid accounts of the daily work of boats and crews, where
hours of dull routine can be shattered by nerve-wracking emergencies.
Good though the text is, the photographs are the book’s chief
attraction. Robb Douglas’s camera has captured tugs and crews in all
their achievements and attitudes: a sunset aerial view of a tug and boom
in Welcome Passage, a wheelhouse shot of a seated skipper casually
directing his tug by placing his boot between the spokes of the steering
wheel, a deckhand preparing to leap from tug to barge, tugs of all types
working in weather of all kinds—they all captivate the eye.

Skookum Tugs is an admirable alliance of text and illustrations. While
tugboats may lack glamor, they do not lack respect from those who know
them best, as this book proves. A map of coastal British Columbia would
have assisted the reader, but Skookum Tugs is still a welcome addition
to the vast literature of books about ships and the sea.